Is anybody familiar with any BBSes being linked to 'the fediverse'?
I use Mastodon and Lemmy and have been thinking a bit about how they might be able to be integrated into a BBS. I think they could be a good fit, though I don't have every detail figured out of how that might work.
If there is an API to these social platforms (which I
think there is), the effort to add it to clrghouz should
be quite minimal. If somebody has one of these running,
then I'm happy to have a crack to see if it would work
and what it might look like. I know somebody in fidonet
did it for telegram.
My initial thoughts werent to open up all echos to
social platforms (I'm thinking that is just looking for
trouble - but it would be up to the ZC I guess), but
maybe some specialised echos might be a useful idea
(like a "help" to get bbs environment going, or problem
diagnosis etc..).
I'm definitely curious about different ways integration could be done - I think there is potential in an echomail gateway but I'm not sure what the trade-offs will be when it comes to gating posts from the fediverse.
I haven't looked into Lemmy and its API at all yet.
Toot - a CLI and TUI tool for interacting with Mastodon instances from
the command line.
https://github.com/ihabunek/toot
I'd also happily consider spinning up another network
with more relaxed rules (assuming you cant control who
comes in from the gated side) - but then it might not be
appealling due to spam, or those who just join forums to
spew abuse?
My motivation to do this, will be from the coding side
of making it happen, but I probably wouldnt be a
messenger - so unless there is an interest, it'll be on
the bottom of my "what should I do next" list :)
I haven't looked into Lemmy and its API at all yet.
If anyone needs a tester I do have accounts on most of those through
my SDF account... I think I logged into lemmy once, same with mastasomething.
I do use telegram for one chat. Discord I didn't like, but use it when
I have to though I don't think I have an account.
Toot - a CLI and TUI tool for interacting with Mastodon instances from
the command line.
https://github.com/ihabunek/toot
This is the one I use to post weather to my Mastodon
account (as well as the joke & horoscope bots), I also
use it to delete old weather posts. It would be simple
enough to post a "Warpslide has logged into Another
Millennium" message with this utility.
The Mastodon instance I use has a 500 character limit
for posts, as does mastodon.social, so I'm not sure if
gating FTN messages out to Mastodon would be practical.
I see your weather reports regularly and hadn't even considered that you had automated it. :)
Good point. I think the character limit is set per-instance (I
sometimes see very long posts from other instances) but when I post on mastodon.social I do run into the post limits. So I guess either character limits would need to be known/enforced on the BBS end (or messages just get cut off if too long), or any gateway would need to be connected to a mastodon server with larger post limits. (I think I lean toward 'keep the messages short'.)
I had to use ImageMagick to turn the weather forecast
into an image to get around the character limit. It's
funny how I can only post 500 characters of text but
posting a 32k image of text with up to 1500 characters
of alt-text (which more than fits the whole forecast) is
perfectly ok.
This could work with ftn messages that are less than
1000 characters, but longer posts could get messy.
Maybe spinning up your own instance with larger limit
would be easier, or consider something like lemmy which
has a 10,000 character limit by default. Lemmy uses
ActivityPub, so you can follow those accounts from
Mastodon.
There's also Matrix which is more like discord which has
"up to ~65200 bytes" available for messages.
One of the things that I've thought about for clrghouz while developing it, was to integrate with other social platforms. I run a matrix server here, and that was going to be my first one to look at/play with.
My initial thoughts werent to open up all echos to social platforms (I'm thinking that is just looking for trouble - but it would be up to the ZC
I guess), but maybe some specialised echos might be a useful idea (like
a "help" to get bbs environment going, or problem diagnosis etc..).
Can Matrix accounts (I guess it would be channels?) be followed from
other fediverse services like Mastodon/Lemmy? I haven't gotten on
Matrix yet (I'm not sure why not at this point).
Excellent! Time to get Silver Xpress connected to the fediverse, maybe?
Telegram is actually my go-to for moving pictures etc between PC and
phone - it's convenient that I can just drop stuff in the 'Saved
messages' chat and it shows up on my other devices. I find it
convenient because it supports the different platforms I use.
Discord I have mixed feelings about. I find it works well and is quite convenient. Its closed nature and the eventual enshittification that
will surely come make it a terrible platform. I use it every day.
<shrug>
It looks like Matrix speaks it's own protocol:
https://ibb.co/CnVQS49
MeaTLoTioN aka Christian of The Quantum Wormhole runs (ran?) a Matrix server, but it doesn't seem to be up at the moment:
It looks like Matrix speaks it's own protocol:
https://ibb.co/CnVQS49
MeaTLoTioN aka Christian of The Quantum Wormhole runs
(ran?) a Matrix server, but it doesn't seem to be up at
the moment:
Telegram is actually my go-to for moving pictures etc between PC and
phone - it's convenient that I can just drop stuff in the 'Saved
messages' chat and it shows up on my other devices. I find it
convenient because it supports the different platforms I use.
I get that, never thought to use it for that, but it is easier then
hunting for a darn cord to copy pictures.
Discord I have mixed feelings about. I find it works well and is quite convenient. Its closed nature and the eventual enshittification that
will surely come make it a terrible platform. I use it every day.
<shrug>
I just need to spend time in it and I am sure I could learn to like it.
I'm stealing your "enshittification" word. ;)
I wonder what everyone else is using, because shifting photos (and other files) between desktop and phone seems less simple than it should be. I feel like using Telegram is a bit of a hacky work-around and "there must be a simpler way" (but I do't know what that would be).
I'm an apple fan, so for me I just use "Air Drop". :)
To share files between machines, I use a mix of
Syncthing and Nextcloud. I'm actually thinking of
turning off Nextcloud - I mainly set it up to share
files externally (with a url and password), but
everybody I've done that with doesnt know how to use it.
I wonder what everyone else is using, because shifting photos (and other files) between desktop and phone seems less simple than it should be. I feel like using Telegram is a bit of a hacky work-around and "there must
be a simpler way" (but I do't know what that would be).
Cory Doctorow is also on Mastodon posting daily - that's where I
discover most of his writing:
https://mastodon.social/@pluralistic@mamot.fr
I'm an apple fan, so for me I just use "Air Drop". :)
I use google photo's as a way of backing them up too. I know it's not good and they can go down etc etc etc. I'm just too damn lazy to figure out a good way to sync between the two.
It looks like Matrix speaks it's own protocol:
https://ibb.co/CnVQS49
I have one too :) https://matrix.dege.au
I might play with this over the next week or so and see
if I can get two way messages flowing between
matrix/fsxnet in FSX_TST.
The interesting challenge will be how to manage messages
that are pictures/files, and then what to do with them.
I have one too :) https://matrix.dege.au
So for shits and giggles, I thought I'd see how easy it is to setup an integration with matrix - and it was quite easy. So it should be quite easy to integrate with clrghouz.
I'm stealing your "enshittification" word. ;)
I wonder what everyone else is using, because shifting photos (and other files) between desktop and phone seems less simple than it should be. I feel like using Telegram is a bit of a hacky work-around and "there must be a simpler way" (but I do't know what that would be).
So I have created integration with matrix, and I'm
mirroring messages from FSX_TST into https://matrix.to/#/#ftn_fsx_tst:matrix.dege.au.
Do you have OneDrive or iCloud or similar (Dropbox,
etc.)? Seems that's exactly the kind of use case
they're made for. They have phone and desktop
integrations/apps for all platforms.
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